


The history of The Drawer

by i_gaze_at_scully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-10-09 05:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17400491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_gaze_at_scully/pseuds/i_gaze_at_scully
Summary: How does Mulder get his first drawer at Scully’s?





	The history of The Drawer

It happens slowly over time, incrementally, then all at once.

 **i.**  Scully can tell he’s a careless packer. She notices when he wears the same button down two days in a row on a case, knows he forgot to pack enough. She sees him tuck a three-pack of underwear under his arm in the gas station sometimes when he thinks she’s not looking. So when she does a final sweep of their rooms after a case one day and finds his sleep shirt strewn behind the chair, she is not surprised. She throws it in her bag and intends to give it to him when they get back to DC.

But it turns out Scully can be careless sometimes too.

She smells the shirt before she sees it, so starkly contrasted with the unremarkable, unrecognizable scent of her own clothes. She tsks at herself but cannot decide what to do about the predicament she’s put herself in. She should stick it in her work bag and bring it to the office tomorrow. But wouldn’t that be weird? He’d make it weird. Make some sort of underhanded sexual jab. No, she decides. She’ll hang on to it till their next case. Remind him to do a proper sweep next time.

She presses the shirt to her nose briefly before tucking it away in the back of her top dresser drawer.

 **ii.**  He stays at her place a number of times. There’s a blackout one night, when he’s too drunk to drive and too content to leave. Sometimes when they get back too late from the airport to make driving back to his place worth it, she’ll offer. She keeps a spare set of sheets clean and a toothbrush in the linen closet for him. 

Sometimes when one or both of them nearly die, she won’t offer. He won’t ask. It’ll just happen.

“Here you go,” she says softly, handing him the sheets. He stares at them mutely, stares at her hands beside his. They share custody of those sheets for a while. 

It wasn’t that he almost died, this time. It was that he’d nearly lost himself. Been so inside a killer’s head that he lost sleep, lost time, lost memory. They locked Patterson up and she looked at Mulder, knowing how easily it could have been him. It was almost him.

She covers his hand with hers atop the cushion of the sheets. “Take these,” she says. “I have something for you.” She pauses a moment to make sure he won’t drop the sheets when she pulls away, then retreats to her room. Moments later, she reappears with a small stack of clothes.

“You have a tendency to leave things lying around, you know,” she jests, trying to lighten the mood, crack that tightly wound coil of his mind before it snaps. Before he snaps.

“A shirt,” she lists, “a pair of gym shorts, one sock, and a sweatshirt.” She hands the pile over to him, placing it on top of the sheets. He picks up the singular sock with one hand and his vacant features shift into a small flicker of a smile. 

“Thanks, Scully.” He doesn’t make a jab or joke. He is warm and tender, grateful and small. She doesn’t know whether to be relieved or afraid.

When he leaves in the morning, the clothes are still there, neatly folded beside the couch.

 **iii.** He finds out. Of course he does, pain in the ass that he is.

He comes over at all hours of the night unannounced. This is not news. She shouldn’t have been surprised then when he catches her in his old Oxford tshirt, but she’s mortified nonetheless.

“It’s laundry day,” she stammers, wanting to slap that shit eating grin right off his face.

“I’ve got a whole closetful Scully, you could’ve just asked,” he smirks, and she crosses her arms tightly over his alma mater on her chest.

“Laundry day.” She’s sticking to it.

 **iv.** She is sick and he is there. She is sick and he brings his Sunday newspaper over to her place to read while she sips the tea he brought her. He makes her soup that she won’t eat, reads random articles to her. He even folds her laundry.

“Mulder,” she argues weakly. He waves his hand at her, stacks her clothes neatly at the foot of her bed. 

“A third of this is mine anyway, Scully.” He smiles at her and she ignores the pain in his eyes. “You’ve got quite a collection.” 

It’s nearly time now, she knows. She wonders as she watches him fold how much of her dignity she’d be willing to sacrifice when they bring her to the hospital to die, to have some of him with her then. She doesn’t bother hiding his sleep shirt under her robe that night, or making up the couch.

 **v.** They’re on the floor before she knows what’s happening. The shirts, the pants, the socks and sweatshirts and shorts, all of it. She’s taking them by the handful out of the top drawer and throwing them over her shoulder. His clothes, her clothes, everything. When she’s done in that draw, she goes to the linen closet, chucks his brand of toothpaste into the hallway, throws his towel on the ground. The sheets aren’t his. They belong to her. But she throws them on the floor too. She allows herself a moment, just a moment, to bury her face in the oversized sweatshirt of his she’s been wearing around the house, before shoving it all into a duffle bag.

She knows he’s coming. She knows after six years that when Fox Mulder sticks his foot in his mouth he will come to her not to apologize, but to pull it out for him. She won’t this time. She sits on her living room couch with a duffle bag and a glass of wine.

_You’re making this personal._

She puts her free hand between her knees to keep it from shaking.

He has the grace to knock, and she deigns to answer. She opens the door enough to shove the duffle into his arms, but doesn’t have time to close it before he’s stumbling into the room, duffle and all.

“Scul–” He takes it all in, the wine and matching silk pajamas, the duffle and her puffy eyes, and her name dies in his throat. “What is this?”

“Your clothes.” She does not wait for him to object. “I needed the drawer.” 

“Oh come on, Scully–”

“Do not,” she commands, low and husky, a rumble of thunder before the cacophony. She places a hand on the duffle and pushes him back towards the door.

“It’s nothing personal,” she lies. His face falls in shock and she shuts the door on him, shuts it and slinks right down to the floor beside it. Waits for minutes in agony before she hears him walk away, waits some more until she can’t hear his footsteps anymore, and cries.

 **vi.** He gets his shit together. Somewhere along the way, it clicked to him how lucky he is to  _know_  Scully let alone be loved by her, and he gets his shit together. She doesn’t overthink it, because she has a lot of coming to terms to do of her own. She’s the one that has to let him back in, somehow.

He brings over a peace offering in the form of a ratty old Knicks tshirt. After the thawing, the softening, the tentative trial and error.

They finish a movie and Scully brings the popcorn bowl to the kitchen. When she comes back, Mulder has the tshirt extended out to her.

“For laundry day,” he says.

When he’s gone, she presses it to her nose and inhales deeply before returning it to its spot in her drawer.

 **vii.** They laugh about it one day. Mulder is rifling through the top drawer, his drawer, for a button down and Scully is making it incredibly difficult. Wrapped around his torso from behind, she presses her cheek to his back and hums into his spine.

“Scully, how did you ever reach anything in this drawer?” He teases, closing it and turning around in her arms. He lowers his hands to her back, pulls her in closer.

“Sure, make fun of the short person.” To reinforce her point, she reaches up on tiptoes to kiss him. 

“Never,” he says against her lips.

_They laugh about it another day, too (they’ve been doing so much more laughing lately). They are folding laundry side by side and Scully bumps Mulder’s shoulder._

_“Do you have_ any _clothes at your place, Mulder?” She sweeps a hand over the bed, dramatically gesturing to the three piles of his clothes. He hums, finishes folding her shirt, and scoops her up into his arms with no warning. She manages to let out a “_ Hey! _” before he dumps her unceremoniously onto the bed. She’s hardly caught her breath by the time he’s hovering over her, and then she’s laughing. She pulls a pile of her clothes, or more likely his, out from under her and lays back properly.  
_

_“Do I need to?” He asks, kissing her jaw, her cheek. She wraps her legs around him and marvels in the fact that he means it, he really doesn’t know. His face is scruffy in her hands as she brushes her thumbs over his lips and shakes her head.  
_

_“No,” she tells him. “You don’t.”_


End file.
